“So tell me who exactly took part in this shoot.”

“The king and three of his sons. The Duchess of York. Your mother and her fat German friend. Prince Siegfried. Major Padgett and a couple of older men who I believe are His Majesty’s equerries. Then there were the outsiders: Gussie, myself, Hugo, your two hairy cousins—oh, and the American, Earl, turned up with a young Austrian count.”

“That would be Fritzi,” I said. “I’m surprised Earl is here. You’d have thought he’d be sitting at Babe’s bedside.”

“He said he couldn’t turn down the chance to shoot with the king. He’ll be able to dine on that story forever back in America.”

“Yes, I suppose he will.” My mind was already working overtime. Earl so keen to be part of the shoot, with Babe lying in hospital. That didn’t sound like the devoted husband. Was it possible something quite different was going on here? What if Earl had rigged up that cistern to fall on his wife’s head, and Hugo had seen him? I didn’t think that Hugo would be beyond a bit of blackmail. Hugo’s death might have nothing whatever to do with the royal line of succession.

The first of a line of shooting brakes appeared below us at the edge of the moor. Darcy put his hand on my arm and turned me to face him. “Look, Georgie. I don’t like the sound of this at all. I don’t want you involved in it in any way. I hope you weren’t the intended target when that rope broke, but we can’t rule out the possibility that you were. You are also part of the line of succession.”

“Thirty-fourth, Darcy. If someone wanted to be king, he’d have to kill off an awful lot of people ahead of me. Somebody would catch him before he got to number one.”

Darcy was still frowning. “I wonder what motive anyone would have. Surely nobody could believe that he’d wind up as king if he killed off everyone between him and the throne! Maybe it’s a particular grudge against the Windsor family or royalty in general? Somebody the king could have pardoned and didn’t?”

“That’s a thought,” I said, “but it rules out one element: it had to be somebody who was part of our set. An outsider would have been spotted creeping through Castle Rannoch, and how could an outsider have got to today’s shoot? There’s a wall around the estate to start with, isn’t there, and he would certainly have been spotted.”

“Not necessarily,” Darcy said. “As for finding a way onto the estate, that’s not hard. And there’s plenty of woodland cover below the grouse moor and with today’s mist I believe that someone could have crept close enough to shoot somebody.”